Calamity Town

HOLIDAY HOMICIDE

It all starts when Ellery Queen goes to a small town, disguised as Ellery
Smith, to write a novel. He moves into a little house originally built for
Nora Wright, whose fiance, Jim Haight, had left town on the eve of the
wedding three years before. Then Jim comes back, and things begin to
happen. There are the three post-dated letters, for instance, and
the attempted arsenic poisonings, which convince Ellery that someone
is going to be murdered - but who? and why? Then the poisoned cocktail at
Nora's New Year's Eve party, and the trial by public opinion on the
streets, and what turns out to be a mistrial in court. Two more deaths
follow, from more-or-less natural causes, before Patricia, Nora's sister,
supplies Ellery with the one fact he needs to make a perfect and
logical whole out of what he calls "the oddest case of mixed-up
people, emotions, and events I've ever run across." This is one
of Queen's best.